The Age of Innocence eBook

After he had leaned out into the darkness for a few
minutes he heard her say: “Newland!
Do shut the window. You’ll catch your
death.”

He pulled the sash down and turned back. “Catch
my death!” he echoed; and he felt like adding:
“But I’ve caught it already. I
am dead—­I’ve been dead for months
and months.”

And suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild
suggestion. What if it were she who was
dead! If she were going to die—­to
die soon—­and leave him free! The sensation
of standing there, in that warm familiar room, and
looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so strange,
so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity
did not immediately strike him. He simply felt
that chance had given him a new possibility to which
his sick soul might cling. Yes, May might die—­
people did: young people, healthy people like
herself: she might die, and set him suddenly
free.

She glanced up, and he saw by her widening eyes that
there must be something strange in his own.

“Newland! Are you ill?”

He shook his head and turned toward his arm-chair.
She bent over her work-frame, and as he passed he laid
his hand on her hair. “Poor May!”
he said.

“Poor? Why poor?” she echoed with
a strained laugh.

“Because I shall never be able to open a window
without worrying you,” he rejoined, laughing
also.

For a moment she was silent; then she said very low,
her head bowed over her work: “I shall
never worry if you’re happy.”

“Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless
I can open the windows!”

“In this weather?” she remonstrated;
and with a sigh he buried his head in his book.

Six or seven days passed. Archer heard nothing
from Madame Olenska, and became aware that her name
would not be mentioned in his presence by any member
of the family. He did not try to see her; to
do so while she was at old Catherine’s guarded
bedside would have been almost impossible. In
the uncertainty of the situation he let himself drift,
conscious, somewhere below the surface of his thoughts,
of a resolve which had come to him when he had leaned
out from his library window into the icy night.
The strength of that resolve made it easy to wait
and make no sign.

Then one day May told him that Mrs. Manson Mingott
had asked to see him. There was nothing surprising
in the request, for the old lady was steadily recovering,
and she had always openly declared that she preferred
Archer to any of her other grandsons-in-law.
May gave the message with evident pleasure: she
was proud of old Catherine’s appreciation of
her husband.

There was a moment’s pause, and then Archer
felt it incumbent on him to say: “All
right. Shall we go together this afternoon?”

His wife’s face brightened, but she instantly
answered: “Oh, you’d much better
go alone. It bores Granny to see the same people
too often.”